Is a foundation required to keep books?

Yes. Article 2:10 of the Dutch Civil Code requires every board to keep records from which the rights and obligations of the foundation can be established at any moment. Within six months of the end of the financial year the board must draw up a balance sheet and a statement of income and expenditure, and keep those for seven years. That applies to a small foundation without staff too.

How does this differ from an association's bookkeeping?

Administratively, hardly at all. The difference is on the income side: an association collects membership fees from members, a foundation lives on donations, grants or proceeds. So a foundation deals more often with spending obligations and with accounting per project, and less with a member list.

Can it just be a spreadsheet?

For a foundation with twenty transactions a year, it can. It breaks down as soon as a grant arrives that has to be accounted for, or as soon as the board changes and nobody knows how the file works any more. A spreadsheet also does not record who changed what and when, and that is exactly what an audit committee wants to see.

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Bookkeeping for a foundation

Q: What must a public-benefit organisation publish on top of that?

A recognised public-benefit organisation must publish annually on the internet what came in and what went out, with a balance sheet or a statement of income and expenditure and an explanatory note. Fail to publish and the tax authority can withdraw the status, which removes the tax relief for your donors retroactively.

What the law asks of you, what public-benefit status adds, and how to keep it up without it becoming a second job.

What the law requires

Article 2:10 of the Dutch Civil Code applies to every foundation, including one with three board members and no staff. The board must keep records from which the rights and obligations can be established at any moment. Not at the end of the year: at any moment.

A balance sheet and a statement of income and expenditure

Within six months of the end of the financial year. This is not the annual accounts a company files; it is an overview of assets, debts, income and expenditure.
Keep it for seven years

The records and the supporting documents. Receipts, bank statements, contracts. Also when the board has changed three times since.
Substantiation per entry

Every entry needs a document behind it. A transfer without an invoice or receipt is a gap, and that gap comes back the moment somebody asks where the money went.

A foundation does not have to file its figures with the Chamber of Commerce, unless it has commercial activities of some size. That does not make the article 2:10 obligation any softer; it only means nobody checks until something goes wrong.

And if you have public-benefit status

A recognised public-benefit organisation must publish every year on the internet what came in and what went out, with a balance sheet or a statement of income and expenditure and an explanatory note. That sits alongside the record-keeping duty; it is an extra requirement.

If you do not publish, the tax authority can withdraw the status. That hits not only you but your donors, because their tax relief lapses retroactively. That is the kind of letter no board wants to write.

In practice foundations rarely trip over unwillingness but over scattered files: the treasurer has the figures, the secretary runs the website, and in March nobody knows which version is right.

Where a foundation differs from an association

Administratively the difference is smaller than people think. The bookkeeping works the same; the distinction is on the income side.

No members, so no membership fees

A foundation has donors, benefactors or participants, but no members with voting rights. What is automatic fee collection at an association is a donation or a per-project invoice at a foundation.

Accounting per grant or project

If money comes from a fund or a municipality, they want to know what it was spent on. That calls for labelling expenditure, not just a total.

Still a board, still an audit

A foundation has its books checked too, even though there is no general meeting granting formal discharge. That is done by an audit committee or a supervisory board.

How Ledenboek handles this

Ledenboek is built for associations, and a foundation uses the same parts. What you switch on and what you leave alone differs.

✓ Import bank statements via MT940 or CAMT, with labels per project or grant
✓ Send invoices to donors, funds or participants, with reminders that go out by themselves
✓ Expense claims from board members and volunteers, with approval on them
✓ Annual figures and a balance sheet you can carry straight into your public-benefit publication
✓ Digital audit committee review, recording who saw what and when
✓ Keep documents with the foundation, so articles and contracts sit with the figures

What you do not use, you switch off. A foundation without members leaves the membership side alone and keeps the financial part.

What it costs

Our price depends on the number of active relations, not on what you use. A foundation with a small file and a handful of donors sits in the lowest plan of €99 per year. Everything is included; there are no separate modules and no transaction fees from us.

If you are weighing up providers, also look at the overview of ten packages.

Support and your data

Two things you should be able to count on with software for your association: that someone answers when you get stuck, and that your member records stay where they belong.

If you have a question

✓ You email and a human replies, within one business day
✓ The person who replies built it. Report a bug and it's sometimes fixed the same day
✓ No bot that replies automatically. What you read back was written by a human
✓ No queue, no ticket number, no chatbot that asks five questions first
✓ Helping you think through how to set things up is part of the service and costs nothing extra

You can call on Monday to Friday between 09:00 and 17:00, on +31 84 833 2125. No queue and no menu; you get the person who built it. If we are on another call, leave a message and you will hear back the same working day. Outside office hours and during holidays there is no cover, so then it goes by email.

Where your data lives

✓ Everything within the EU. The servers are at Hetzner in Germany
✓ Every party that does something for us is also in the EU, in the Netherlands, Germany or Ireland. No transfers beyond it
✓ Member records are never sold, rented out or used to offer your members anything
✓ Membership fees go directly to the association's bank account, not through us
✓ You can export your full member records yourself at any time

The data processing agreement is available online, naming all six parties and where they are based. An association ought to have one; you shouldn't have to ask for it.

Try it for thirty days

Put your bank statements in and see whether it fits. No credit card, and if it does nothing for you, you do nothing.

Try for free

Also read bookkeeping for an association and how the audit committee review works.